The Liberal Arts

Alicia Ostriker

In mathematics they say the most beautiful solution is the correct one

In physics they say everything that can happen must happen

In history they say the more it changes the more it is the same

In astrophysics you take the long view

In chemistry you explode and blend, it is a bit like freestyle cooking, the

Yiddish term would be: you potschke

In biology you smell the flowers, the enticing flowers, and you play with mice,

and you write grant proposals

In jurisprudence they say there is no justice

In philosophy they say there is no truth

In literary studies they say everybody come along be ironic now

Business school we systematize the competitive strategies we learned in the

sandbox

Engineering moves us firmly into manhood, we grip the material world in our

fists

Computer science assists us toward the goal of replacing our species with a

new, improved, more efficient form of life, based in electronics instead of carbon --

many of us

are rushing to transform ourselves as quickly as possible

Religion is still hot

People keep plunging passionately into and out of it at the usual brisk rate

Geography suggests the future dominance of North America by Spanish-

speaking people

but it does not say when; geology looks stony, takes the long view

Music bridges mathematics, the soul of the universe, and my personal soul

Visual art is the bridge between my bag of body and bones and stuff in the

painterly universe

Drama crosses this bridge on foot

In the novel they say omit nothing, harvest the entire goddamn world

In memoir they say the self is silently weeping, give it a tissue

In poetry they say the arrow may be blown off course by storm and returned

by miracle